SGOTM 14 - Xteam

[Cactus Pete]

One Settler heads for Copper City, how about the second? Do we have a strong enough army to protect a city planted near the redoubt? Or on the spoke SW of York? May want to hold the second settler back so units are available to both protect copper city and take Harrapan.
Perhaps see what's wandering about at the base of our spoke before committing second settler.
Should we whip another Settler somewhere, say in Washington or Boston?

Do need to include in plan means for creating another settler.

Not sure forge is worth the hammers in NY. A galley from there would seem likely to be useful soon. Concur with galley in Wash after axe.

 

[Htadus]

I am completely in the dark as to what is the current focus and plan of this game. We are going to do some major whipping before going into some kind of.......what?

I am very confused and am not able to help. So I am going to just sit out until I know what is the plan is before saying anything objective. So consider me on self placed hiatus until I understand what is going on or until my turn set. At which time I will contribute to the path chosen.

 

[leif erikson]

I am completely in the dark as to what is the current focus and plan of this game. We are going to do some major whipping before going into some kind of.......what?

I am very confused and am not able to help. So I am going to just sit out until I know what is the plan is before saying anything objective. So consider me on self placed hiatus until I understand what is going on or until my turn set. At which time I will contribute to the path chosen.

It is your idea to plant a city and use culture, and the capture of Great Wall, that has put us here.

I think we are all feeling our way towards what comes next as there are a lot of options. The only way I know of to find our next objective is to put our thoughts on the table, along with our rationale, and then we will need to chose our path forward. This also includes what info we need to make the decision, along with what testing needs to be done.

I do not know whether we whip for war and count on the city near the redoubt to do what we need or if we still need to get to Paratroopers, running a full-up specialist economy to achieve that?

If we decide the option is war, what techs, if any, do we need to start that?
If it is research, what techs do we need to achieve before going to war?
Is there still a need to get Education, build Universities and Oxford, or does using culture on the redoubt make those plans obsolete?

Thinking we have much to decide and little time for any of us to sit out.

 

[Htadus]

My concern is that we need to stay flexible while staying focus on an intimidiate goal. Both CP and Hawk, who has more experiance than rest of us put togather, do not want to go into full war and I support it. But we do need to get our power up to hold a city in the bridge. The AI can not build enough units alone but the two can field enough units.

1. We need to have a sound plan to defend the bridge.
2. We need a spy gallied over to India to see how the AI is commiting itself to this war.
3. May be a minor force can take a few cities via gallies. AI Usually suck at defending rear cities. And all these cities are going to be defended by a few units. If need be, I am all for razing a few of the cities just to keep the army mobile and profitable. Let them build more settlers. OK I rarely raze cities. So that is bad.

These are just random thoughts that need to be considered and decided. As for the junk city, I like the cyan(?) site too.

But back to focus. Are we going to plan a GP schedule?

BTW, as long as there is a surface route, AI will not do a naval landing. So getting a Trireme to the indian side will further deter any chance of that.

 

[The-Hawk]

It is your idea to plant a city and use culture, and the capture of Great Wall, that has put us here.

I agreed completely. Htadus, this was an outstanding train of thought, I never would have gone here myself. This has potential to turn the game into a run-of-the-mill conquest. I've been assuming we had a deep science run requirement, now I need to recalibrate my brain.

By the way, I noticed on the graphs some of the other teams are on steep culture curves. I wonder if they've come to a similar conclusion? Probably just wonders...

 

[The-Hawk]

I was having real trouble figuring out tile arrangements under the FOW. So I decided to draw a pic and superimpose gridlines in white. I've marked tiles that could possibly be internal non-mountain tiles (ie. none of these are reachable by sea) with white "x"s.

I then mapped the culture expansions for cyan and red cities. Cyran's 500 cp pop is the blue line. Cyan's 5000 pop is the yellow line. Red's 500 pop is the red line and its 5000 pop is the pink line.

Two conclusions:

1) While we may get lucky with 3 border pops, we need to assume this will require 5000 culture points. Cyan and Red each miss two x's with 3 pops. A GA may well be needed.

2) Cyan is the site. Red will not cover one tile even after 4 pops. See the white "x" to the far left. It is covered by the yellow line, but not by pink.

 

[leif erikson]

Two conclusions:

1) While we may get lucky with 3 border pops, we need to assume this will require 5000 culture points. Cyan and Red each miss two x's with 3 pops. A GA may well be needed.

2) Cyan is the site. Red will not cover one tile even after 4 pops. See the white "x" to the far left. It is covered by the yellow line, but not by pink.

Agreed. Convenient we have so much extra pop to run specialists.

Now the question is timing and 1 or 2 Great Artists.
(sorry, my army training taught me to never leave anything to chance, always have a bit extra in my back pocket, just in case...)

 

[-Asterix-]

One Settler heads for Copper City, how about the second? I thought about settling either next to mountain wall or SW of York once we have some units to secure it. More about this below. Do we have a strong enough army to protect a city planted near the redoubt? Or on the spoke SW of York?
Should we whip another Settler somewhere, say in Washington or Boston? Yes, need to check what it looks like in the save. Not sure about the city yet.
And what about Harrapan? Send our current Swords or plan to build some after TGLibrary? Totally forgot this. I believe 4 units (maybe 3 swords + cat) would do transported in two sets with one galley. I'll check this too and see what can be done.
Know 5-turns isn't much time, but ...

Do need to include in plan means for creating another settler. Yes.

Not sure forge is worth the hammers in NY. A galley from there would seem likely to be useful soon. What would be the base hammer minimum when you're considering whether to build a forge or not? Here we would get to 12 base hammers with 8 pop (city+mine+seafood+6 coasts) for +3 bonus from forge. Concur with galley in Wash after axe. I'll check the save again to see if it would be best to build a sword for Harappan from Wash instead. Or another axe to secure sites SW.

I am completely in the dark as to what is the current focus and plan of this game. We are going to do some major whipping before going into some kind of.......what?

I am very confused and am not able to help. So I am going to just sit out until I know what is the plan is before saying anything objective. So consider me on self placed hiatus until I understand what is going on or until my turn set. At which time I will contribute to the path chosen. Sorry about not stating this clearly in the plan. I've written about it below but keep in mind that this is just an intermediate plan of the next 5 turns.

It is your idea to plant a city and use culture, and the capture of Great Wall, that has put us here. Exactly.

I do not know whether we whip for war and count on the city near the redoubt to do what we need or if we still need to get to Paratroopers, running a full-up specialist economy to achieve that?

If we decide the option is war, what techs, if any, do we need to start that?
If it is research, what techs do we need to achieve before going to war?
Is there still a need to get Education, build Universities and Oxford, or does using culture on the redoubt make those plans obsolete?

Thinking we have much to decide and little time for any of us to sit out.

As leif points out, we have lots of different options from which to choose. That's why the main objective here should be to figure out what would be the fastest way to win this game. That's why I'd like to settle that "crap-city" next to mountains (that blue/cyanide spot) asap and make it's borders pop once. That pop to full bfc would tell us if there's a city or not in the middle of those mountains as it would reveal enough tiles for us to see possible barbarian cultural borders. This pop would be achieved by religion or possibly with artist spec if we switch to caste.

Regarding those two whips, it's just whipping unimproved tiles away to give time to our workers to improve some more tiles.

 

[-Asterix-]

My concern is that we need to stay flexible while staying focus on an intimidiate goal. Agree. We need to stay flexible until we know exactly what we need to kill the wizard. After that we can choose our path to fastest victory. Both CP and Hawk, who has more experiance than rest of us put togather, do not want to go into full war and I support it. Agree here too. No need to go to full war until we know what's behind those mountains. And I think I've never said otherwise. But we do need to get our power up to hold a city in the bridge. The AI can not build enough units alone but the two can field enough units.

1. We need to have a sound plan to defend the bridge. Yup.
2. We need a spy gallied over to India to see how the AI is commiting itself to this war. Not sure about this as we can't map things out efficiently with just one or two spies. Probably better to use those hammers for axes/something and suppose that there will be some more troops coming to our lands.
3. May be a minor force can take a few cities via gallies. AI Usually suck at defending rear cities. And all these cities are going to be defended by a few units. If need be, I am all for razing a few of the cities just to keep the army mobile and profitable. Let them build more settlers. OK I rarely raze cities. So that is bad. I'd rather wait until we have enough troops to go there and actually conquer the cities. I believe that we will conquer Asoka quite soon after we start with that business so it would be nice to get lots of juicy cities from him to help building our army later.

But back to focus. Are we going to plan a GP schedule? First we want to know what GP pops in NK after 5 turns.

BTW, as long as there is a surface route, AI will not do a naval landing. So getting a Trireme to the indian side will further deter any chance of that. Like this.

I was having real trouble figuring out tile arrangements under the FOW. So I decided to draw a pic and superimpose gridlines in white. I've marked tiles that could possibly be internal non-mountain tiles (ie. none of these are reachable by sea) with white "x"s.

I then mapped the culture expansions for cyan and red cities. Cyran's 500 cp pop is the blue line. Cyan's 5000 pop is the yellow line. Red's 500 pop is the red line and its 5000 pop is the pink line. Thanks!

Two conclusions:

1) While we may get lucky with 3 border pops, we need to assume this will require 5000 culture points. Cyan and Red each miss two x's with 3 pops. A GA may well be needed. Agree.

2) Cyan is the site. Red will not cover one tile even after 4 pops. See the white "x" to the far left. It is covered by the yellow line, but not by pink. Agree.

Now the question is timing and 1 or 2 Great Artists. I think we won't be in a hurry with those artists. It's useful to get that city up and to full bfc fast but the rest can wait until we have victory in our hands. I don't see point in popping some Great Artists just yet when we rather need GPs for bulbs.

I'll figure out some kind of plan for getting Harappan later today. It probably includes building a sword after axe in Wash and moving our two swords (after healing, probably promote them with CR if possible for faster healing) and a cat in position (one galley too).

One open question is still the settlers. One more will be added to the plan but what sites should be chosen and in what order? Copper city first, that's a no-brainer, but then I'd suggest the two spots SW of York and next to mountains. That site close to York shouldn't need many troops stationed but the mountain city will need some defence. Need to check if we could build some more units for this as we need to be able to defend both the copper city and the mountain city.

And again, we can't really make any solid plans regarding warring until we know whether we need to tech up to paras or not. From here, I hope to find out soon that we can get the wiz with that GW-trick. Then I'd start preparing for war while teching up to cuirassiers (possibly starting some wars in the meantime with cats+phants+maces), and finally let the hell break loose with those horsies to conquer/dominate the world.

And now I secretly hope that Rags would talk again on the next turn because he lost his initial stack...

 

[Cactus Pete]

Plan is developing nicely. You'll need to scout ahead of the copper city settler (suggest using galley as transport). So, in five turns, you'll have a better idea what defenders will be needed and therefore what will be available for Harrapan and how soon you can settle mountain city. Suggest you hold off on peace, if it becomes available, until needed -- either to reduce war weariness or to save units from possible destruction or to obtain Compass.

 

[-Asterix-]

Plan is developing nicely. You'll need to scout ahead of the copper city settler (suggest using galley as transport). Will scout but I thought to use galley + wb to scout the land SW before advancing with other troops. Will consider transporting troops. So, in five turns, you'll have a better idea what defenders will be needed and therefore what will be available for Harrapan and how soon you can settle mountain city. Suggest you hold off on peace, if it becomes available, until needed -- either to reduce war weariness or to save units from possible destruction or to obtain Compass. Agree here. We're peaceful people after all...

Here's the updated plan (changes in blue):

NK: Farm -> ph mine => GLib in 5 turns.
Washington: Engineer -> farm (Do we want to pop GPro here? If so, then glh mine -> farm) => axe in 1 turn. Then build axe to be sent SW and trireme after that.
New York: Moai => forge. Switch mine -> coast after Moai completes.
Boston: Library => sword (for Harappan party).
Philly: Assign citizen to sheep, forge => settler (3 pop whip).
Atlanta: Growth -> 3 pop whip forge => galley (for Harappan party).
Chicago: While at 3 pop, halt growth with half-full food bar to complete granary.
Seattle: fph -> lake to grow in 2 turns, then 3 pop whip forge => LH

Workers:

Worker 5 (near Chicago): stop and go mine ph.
Worker 7 (near Seattle): road & prechop ph.
Rest of the workers complete their tasks and then head SW to improve the copper city. If somebody has important improvements in mind, please let me know.

Harappan party:

Heal 2 swords and damaged cat in Philly -> head towards Atlanta.
Boston builds third sword -> heads towards Atlanta.
Atlanta builds galley for transport.

First transport 2 swords to other side, then come back for sword + cat. Get all troops to Harappan & conquer.

Other units:

Spearman 1: promote to Medic1.
Catapult 3 goes to copper site with Archer 2 and settlers + missionaries (scout with galley & wb).
Exploring wb and Archer 1 continue scouting.
Axes heal in Philly and head SW to copper site with spearman.

Other stuff:

No civic changes.
No religion adoption.
Keep looking for trade opportunities.
See if Rags & Asoka start to talk again, accept peace.

 

[leif erikson]

Looking good -Asterix-.

A couple of small things, more worries than anything.
The team of units heading for Harapan thins things out a bit for Copper City. Should the Galley or WB see anything coming, and I am a bit more worried about Asoka than Rags, we may find ourselves whipping 'til we bleed. It is also a bit of a haul to get troops down there, takes a fair amount of time.

But please do not mind me, am a worry wart...

Please keep an eye out for HBR. Be nice to get some War Elephant insurance down by the copper.

 

[Cactus Pete]

"See if Rags & Asoka start to talk again, accept peace." Accepting peace as soon as it is offered is not agreeing with me. I'm suggesting we don't accept it unless we need to -- see above.

Also, still don't think expense of building forge is cost effective in a city with a maximum of about 12 hammers and limited growth potential.

 

[-Asterix-]

Please keep an eye out for HBR. Be nice to get some War Elephant insurance down by the copper.

Definitely will. I was already starting to build some phants and couldn't figure out why I can't until I realized we also need HBR. Too much vanilla for me lately, I guess...

"See if Rags & Asoka start to talk again, accept peace." Accepting peace as soon as it is offered is not agreeing with me. I'm suggesting we don't accept it unless we need to -- see above.

Sorry, I misread your earlier comment in haste. But what's your reasoning behind not accepting the peace if it comes available even if we wouldn't get anything for it? I'm usually not that interested to keep up a war we're not ready to fight (yet).

Also, still don't think expense of building forge is cost effective in a city with a maximum of about 12 hammers and limited growth potential.

Again, I'd like to hear your opinion on what amount of base hammers (if you leave whip out) you "require" when building a forge? In NY we get +3H bonus with 8 pop and every 4 pop after that gives +1 to bonus, meaning that forge would pay itself back in 30-40 turns (less if we consider possible whipping). Another possibility here would be to start building lots of galleys/triremes or build barracks and all kinds of units after that.

I think I could play later today or tomorrow but I'd like to hear comments also from Htadus, Hawk & MP before that. Also have time to play during the weekend.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Sorry, I misread your earlier comment in haste. But what's your reasoning behind not accepting the peace if it comes available even if we wouldn't get anything for it? I'm usually not that interested to keep up a war we're not ready to fight (yet). We're not going to have a long-term relationship with Rags, so having him permanently furious is not a concern. It could happen that there is an opportunity to increase the experience of a unit or two, if we stay at war, and we may get more for peace if we delay. Understand that I'm not arguing it's important to maintain war in the face of negative consequences. BTW, at some point we may prefer a cease fire to peace, so we can soon attack India.

Again, I'd like to hear your opinion on what amount of base hammers (if you leave whip out) you "require" when building a forge? Don't have a formula for this, but my usual practice is to build a forge when there are at least 12 base hammers and real long-term advantage to be gained by the extra happiness the forge brings. This case is borderline, and we will need multiple galleys (and a few triremes) to wage effective war soon. Like to start building them. In NY we get +3H bonus with 8 pop and every 4 pop after that gives +1 to bonus, meaning that forge would pay itself back in 30-40 turns (less if we consider possible whipping). Another possibility here would be to start building lots of galleys/triremes or build barracks and all kinds of units after that. We have barracks in other places. Like ships from NY, going to need a lot of them eventually for upgrading and chaining.

I think I could play later today or tomorrow but I'd like to hear comments also from Htadus, Hawk & MP before that. Also have time to play during the weekend.

Agree you should indeed wait for others to comment, but playing five turns soon is fine with me.

 

[Mad Professor]

I think I could play later today or tomorrow but I'd like to hear comments also from Htadus, Hawk & MP before that. Also have time to play during the weekend.

RL has been very demanding. I'm about two pages of serious reading and a couple of hours of gazing at saves behind the rest of you until the weekend at least. I couldn't make an intelligent comment right now. Don't wait for me if you don't want to. I'll catch up again next week.

 

[The-Hawk]

RE: Peace. I think I would just take peace as soon as we can. Might be nice to train up some units, but I also worry about a galley popping out of the fog and getting nets. I think the sooner we can get back to exploring and settling, the better. But, I don't have a strong feeling about this one way or the other.

RE: Forge in New York. I tend to look at this decision differently. First, I agree the decision is much more straightforward due to our many happy resources. The happy component of the decision can be set aside. The question I ask myself is not how many hammers/turn the city generates. Rather, will I be building enough stuff to get payback. So as an example, forge costs 120. Galleons, macemen, and Trebs all cost 70-80. Lets say on average 75, so about 18 hammers benefit per unit from the forge. So, if I believe I am going to build 7 units total of these types over the course of the game, then I would build a forge. Obviously hammers/turn helps define how many I will be able to build before victory, so if I have a low hammer city and expect a quick victory, I will not build forge. If I expect a longer drawn out game, then I might build a forge in a relatively low hammer city. Bottom line, I think I would build the forge in NY. We will be generating plenty of galleons and units.

RE: Barracks. Agree with CP. We should specialize a couple of cities in shipbuilding. Doesn't really matter which (we have so many coastal cities), but they do not need barracks. At some point, if we decide to switch them over to units, we can add a barracks. Come to think of it, Copper city is a good candidate since it can send boats to both oceans.

RE: Trireme in Wash. Since this city has barracks, would rather see units. NY can build a trireme, maybe after a forge whip. In a crisis, Wash can whip a trireme. We need some more units because will need to leave a garrison in Harrapan. Once we revolt to Tao, Liz might go psycho on us.

Oh yeah, almost forgot... plan looks good, I'm ok if you want to proceed.

 

[Htadus]

Here's the updated plan (changes in blue):

NK: Farm -> ph mine => GLib in 5 turns.
Washington: Engineer -> farm (Do we want to pop GPro here? If so, then glh mine -> farm) => axe in 1 turn. Then build axe to be sent SW and trireme after that. GP would be great if can be generated soon
New York: Moai => forge. Switch mine -> coast after Moai completes. None
Boston: Library => sword (for Harappan party). None
Philly: Assign citizen to sheep, forge => settler (3 pop whip). None
Atlanta: Growth -> 3 pop whip forge => galley (for Harappan party). Please let this city grow and build a LH and wait on the Forge
Chicago: While at 3 pop, halt growth with half-full food bar to complete granary.
Seattle: fph -> lake to grow in 2 turns, then 3 pop whip forge => LHPlease let this city also grow, build a LH and hold on the Forge

Workers:

Worker 5 (near Chicago): stop and go mine ph.
Worker 7 (near Seattle): road & prechop ph.
Rest of the workers complete their tasks and then head SW to improve the copper city. If somebody has important improvements in mind, please let me know.
If possible, send a worker to prechop/chop a forest for the copper city to build the Granary

Harappan party:

Heal 2 swords and damaged cat in Philly -> head towards Atlanta.
Boston builds third sword -> heads towards Atlanta.
Atlanta builds galley for transport.

First transport 2 swords to other side, then come back for sword + cat. Get all troops to Harappan & conquer.This party may better used for the fortification of the copper city

Other units:

Spearman 1: promote to Medic1.
Catapult 3 goes to copper site with Archer 2 and settlers + missionaries (scout with galley & wb).
Exploring wb and Archer 1 continue scouting.
Axes heal in Philly and head SW to copper site with spearman.Send the axe with the settler party as well as all the other units that is going to be securing it. Would hate to find a hidded stack showing up the turn after founding it and other available units healing in another city. The units can be garrisoned in the new city and they will heal and will have upto 25% defence build up if the need arise

Other stuff:

No civic changes.
No religion adoption.
Keep looking for trade opportunities.
See if Rags & Asoka start to talk again, accept peace.

Do not accept peace untill it start hurting our economy. This is actually the best way to explore their land, WE do NOT need OB. Plan to send a pillage party. Now that is the party this old Geezer would like to see.

 

[Cactus Pete]

Side with Htadus on letting cities grow rather than whipping forges right now. Also, like to find out what awaits us SW of copper city before committing units to Harrapan.

Hawk's probably right to argue against a trireme now in a city with a barracks already built. Would instead build it now in NY to accompany whatever pillaging party circumstances allow in the not-to-distant future, but not adamantly opposed to a forge there first.

 

[-Asterix-]

Thanks for the comments (and confusing me even more , guys! As everybody can see, there are plenty of hard decisions at hand as we're getting mixed opinions here.

Peace:

- "We do not need OB." Yes.
- "We don't need relations with Rags." Yes.
- "Getting exp for some units." Few exp points don't really matter that much so I'd consider this only as a very minor bonus. And every time we're "training" our units there's also that small possibility of losing them.
- "War is best way to explore." I'd rather have OB and send a couple of whatever units to do that.
- "Getting more for peace if delayed." I don't see this very profitable. I believe that AI would only give us more if we either take out bunch of their units or bring the war to their lands (don't think pillaging party would be enough here), and still I don't see them giving techs unless we take a city or two.
- "Pillaging party." Built in where? I think we have enough in our hands trying to secure the copper site (+ possibly another site in the middle area) so we just don't have troops for it atm.

IMO, we're just not ready to fight a war yet. Settling the copper city + some cities to the middle area would be a lot easier in peace. Also, atm I'd like to see AIs not in war(-prep) mode and building lots of units.

Harappan party + copper site:

- I don't believe that Asoka would have bunch of units heading our way yet. Rags was the one who declared war and the AIs don't work together too well. This said, I believe that a party of cat + archer + spear + 4 axes is enough to secure the copper site (more axes/something coming from Wash later).
- This would free those 2 swords (+1 built later) and cat to go for Harappan.
- Will scout the way with those galley + wb so that I won't run our settler into danger.
- Will consider healing units in new copper city.

New York:

- Building forge would take approximately 20 turns (haven't done the math) and getting the hammers back as a bonus would take 30-40 turns. This sure is kind of a borderline case as CP says.
- Building a trireme here would take maybe bit less than 10 turns now, less later.
- One possibility could be to keep NY as a naval base as suggested and only build boats from there forgetting forge & barracks.
- We would definitely get hammers back and more from forge but do we have time to build it?

I'd do as follows: If we get peace in next few turns, build forge. If not, build trireme => trireme/galley.

Whipping forges:

I'd also let the cities grow if there were good improved tiles to work and support it. but there really aren't yet, at least not in Seattle. In Atlanta I'd like to get a galley for Harappan party because of it's location and whipping that forge for 28 hammers overflow would do that nicely. Also like to get forges up and running sooner than later. Both cities have enough food to grow back in few turns and it would give our workers some time to improve more tiles there.

But if you guys think we should work a bunch of unimproved tiles here, who am I to oppose. Without that rather fast galley from Atlanta we can say good bye to either Harappan or fast copper city.